After a period of relative quiescence following the publication of her last book, What Happened, in 2017, Hillary Clinton has again boosted her media presence to promote a children’s collection, The Book of Gutsy Women, co-written with her daughter Chelsea. Unfortunately for anyone with lingering 2016 PTSD, many of the breakout moments of her comeback tour have revolved around her former opponent.
It began on October 9, when Clinton responded to a presidential tweet goading her to “enter the race to try and steal it away from Uber Left Elizabeth Warren” on the condition that she “must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting ‘C’ Subpoena!” She countered, simply, with:
It was the strongest Trump-related missive of the tour: a short, direct response to a wide-ranging attack that contrasted her professionalism with the president’s usual behavior. If only that tone had been maintained. In an interview with Jane Pauley of CBS News, Clinton called Trump a “corrupt human tornado,” which New York’s Sarah Jones called a “hamfisted attempt to clown on the president.” (More substantively, Clinton also dismissed Joe Biden’s history of unwanted touching, telling people to “get over it.”) And on Sunday, Clinton debuted the newest phase in her singular career — posting bad memes to troll the president. Responding to Trump’s objectively stupid letter to Turkish president Recep Erdogan, Clinton posted a rendering made by Jimmy Kimmel Live! of what Trump’s language might look like in historical context.
It was an unnecessary miss, unlike, say, Elizabeth Warren’s tweet responding to Jacob Wohl’s latest absurdity. Though the president constantly deploys profanity as well as horrid sexual imagery, Clinton, to her credit as a candidate, didn’t stoop to his verbal level — nor did any Democrats want her to. But thanks to this cursed tweet, now there’s a direct visual connection between the 2016 popular-vote winner and the phrase “busting my nuts.”
